Manners and Social Usages - Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (mobile ebook reader TXT) 📗

accompany a young fianc�e on her

journeys to the various places of amusement and to the

watering-places.

 

Nothing is more vulgar in the eyes of our modern society than for

an engaged couple to travel together or to go to the theatre

unaccompanied, as was the primitive custom. This will, we know,

shock many Americans, and be called a “foolish following of

foreign fashions.” But it is true; and, if it were only for the

“looks of the thing,” it is more decent, more elegant, and more

correct for the young couple to be accompanied by a chaperon until

married. Society allows an engaged girl to drive with her fianc�

in an open carriage, but it does not approve of his taking her in

a close carriage to an evening party.

 

There are non-resident chaperons who are most popular and most

useful. Thus, one mamma or elderly lady may chaperon a number of

young ladies to a dinner, or a drive on a coach, a sail down the

bay, or a ball at West Point. This lady looks after all her young

charges, and attends to their propriety and their happiness. She

is the guardian angel, for the moment, of their conduct. It is a

care which young men always admire and respect—this of a kind,

well-bred chaperon, who does not allow the youthful spirits of her

charges to run away with them.

 

The chaperon, if an intelligent woman, and with the sort of social

talent which a chaperon ought to have, is the best friend of a

family of shy girls. She brings them forward, and places them in a

position in which they can enjoy society; for there is a great

deal of tact required in a large city to make a retiring girl

enjoy herself. Society demands a certain amount of handling, which

only the social expert understands. To this the chaperon should be

equal. There are some women who have a social talent which is

simply Napoleonic. They manage it as a great general does his

corps de bataille.

 

Again, there are bad chaperons. A flirtatious married woman who is

thinking of herself only, and who takes young girls about merely

to enable herself to lead a gay life (and the world is full of

such women), is worse than no chaperon at all. She is not a

protection to the young lady, and she disgusts the honorable men

who would like to approach her charge. A very young chaperon, bent

on pleasure, who undertakes to make respectable the coaching

party, but who has no dignity of character to impress upon it, is

a very poor one. Many of the most flagrant violations of

propriety, in what is called the fashionable set, have arisen from

this choice of young chaperons, which is a mere begging of the

question, and no chaperonage at all.

 

Too much champagne is drunk, too late hours are kept, silly

stories are circulated, and appearances are disregarded by these

gay girls and their young chaperons; and yet they dislike very

much to see themselves afterwards held up to ridicule in the pages

of a magazine by an Englishman, whose every sentiment of

propriety, both educated and innate, has been shocked by their

conduct.

 

A young Frenchman who visited America a few years ago formed the

worst judgment of American women because he met one alone at an

artist’s studio. He misinterpreted the profoundly sacred and

corrective influences of art. It had not occurred to the lady that

if she went to see a picture she would be suspected of wishing to

see the artist. Still, the fact that such a mistake could be made

should render ladies careful of even the appearance of evil.

 

A chaperon should in her turn remember that she must not open a

letter, She must not exercise an unwise surveillance. She must not

suspect her charge. All that sort of Spanish espionage is

always outwitted. The most successful chaperons are those who love

their young charges, respect them, try to be in every way what the

mother would have been. Of course, all relations of this sort are

open to many drawbacks on both sides, but it is not impossible

that it may be an agreeable relation, if both parties exercise a

little tact.

 

In selecting a chaperon for a young charge, let parents or

guardians be very particular as to the past history of the lady.

If she has ever been talked about, ever suffered the bad

reputation of flirt or coquette, do not think of placing her in

that position. Clubs have long memories, and the fate of more than

one young heiress has been imperilled by an injudicious choice of

a chaperon. If any woman should have a spotless record and

admirable character it should be the chaperon. It will tell

against her charge if she have not. Certain needy women who have

been ladies, and who precariously attach to society through their

families, are always seeking for some young heiress. These women

are very poor chaperons, and should be avoided.

 

This business of chaperonage is a point which demands attention on

the part of careless American mothers. No mother should be

oblivious of her duty in this respect. It does not imply that she

doubts her daughter’s honor or truth, or that she thinks she needs

watching, but it is proper and respectable and necessary that she

should appear by her daughter’s side in society. The world is full

of traps. It is impossible to be too careful of the reputation of

a young lady, and it improves the tone of society vastly if an

elegant and respectable woman of middle age accompanies every

young party. It goes far to silence the ceaseless clatter of

gossip; it is the antidote to scandal; it makes the air clearer;

and, above all, it improves the character, the manners, and

elevates the minds of the young people who are so happy as to

enjoy the society and to feel the authority of a cultivated, wise,

and good chaperon.

 

CHAPTER XXV.

ETIQUETTE FOR ELDERLY GIRLS.

 

A brisk correspondent writes to us that she finds our restrictions

as to the etiquette which single women should follow somewhat

embarrassing. Being now thirty-five, and at the head of her

father’s house, with no intention of ever marrying, she asks if

she requires a chaperon; if it is necessary that she should

observe the severe self-denial of not entering an artist’s studio

without a guardian angel; if she must never allow a gentleman to

pay for her theatre tickets; if she must, in short, assume a

matron’s place in the world, and never enjoy a matron’s freedom.

 

From her letter we can but believe that this young lady of

thirty-five is a very attractive person, and that she does “not

look her age.” Still, as she is at the head of her father’s house,

etiquette does yield a point and allows her to judge for herself

as to the proprieties which must bend to her. Of course with every

year of a woman’s life after twenty-five she becomes less and less

the subject of chaperonage. For one thing, she is better able to

judge of the world and its temptations; in the second place, a

certain air which may not be less winning, but which is certainly

more mature, has replaced the wild grace of a giddy girlhood. She

has, with the assumption of years, taken on a dignity which, in

its way, is fully the compensation for some lost bloom. Many

people prefer it.

 

But we must say here that she is not yet, in European opinion,

emancipated from that guardianship which society dispenses with

for the youngest widow. She must have a “companion” if she is a

rich woman; and if she is a poor one she must join some party of

friends when she travels. She can travel abroad with her maid, but

in Paris and other Continental cities a woman still young-looking

had better not do this. She is not safe from insult nor from

injurious suspicion if she signs herself “Miss” Smith, and is

without her mother, an elderly friend, a companion, or party.

 

In America a woman can go anywhere and do almost anything without

fear of insult. But in Europe, where the custom of chaperonage is

so universal, she must be more circumspect.

 

As to visiting an artist’s studio alone, there is in art itself an

ennobling and purifying influence which should be a protection.

But we must not forget that saucy book by Maurice Sand, in which

its author says that the first thing he observed in America was

that women (even respectable ones) went alone to artists’ studios.

It would seem wiser, therefore, that a lady, though thirty-five,

should be attended in her visits to studios by a friend or

companion. This simple expedient “silences envious tongues,” and

avoids even the remotest appearance of evil.

 

In the matter of paying for tickets, if a lady of thirty-five

wishes to allow a gentleman to pay for her admission to

picture-galleries and theatres she has an indisputable right to do

so. But we are not fighting for a right, only defining a law of

etiquette, when we say that it is not generally allowed in the

best society, abroad or here. In the case of young girls it is

quite unallowable, but in the case of a lady of thirty-five it may

be permitted as a sort of camaraderie, as one college friend may

pay for another. The point is, however, a delicate one. Men, in

the freedom of their clubs, recount to each other the clever

expedients which many women of society use to extort from them

boxes for the opera and suppers at Delmonico’s. A woman should

remember that it may sometimes be very inconvenient to young men

who are invited by her to go to concerts and theatres to pay for

these pleasures. Many a poor fellow who has become a defaulter has

to thank for it the lady who first asked him to take her to

Delmonico’s to supper. He was ashamed to tell her that he was

poor, and he stole that he might not seem a churl.

 

Another phase of the subject is that a lady in permitting a

gentleman to expend money for her pleasures assumes an obligation

to him which time and chance may render oppressive.

 

With an old friend, however, one whose claim to friendship is well

established, the conditions are changed. In his case there can be

no question of obligation, and a woman may accept unhesitatingly

any of those small attentions and kindnesses which friendly

feeling may prompt him to offer to her.

 

Travelling alone with a gentleman escort was at one time allowed

in the West. A Kentucky woman of that historic period, “before the

war,” would not have questioned the propriety of it, and a Western

man of to-day still has the desire to pay everything, everywhere,

“for a lady.”

 

The increase in the population of the Western States and the

growth of a wealthy and fashionable society in the large towns

have greatly modified this spirit of unwise chivalry, and such

customs are passing away even on the frontier. Mr. Howells’s

novel, “The Lady of the Aroostook,” has acquainted American

readers with the unkind criticism to which a young lady who

travels in Europe without a chaperon is subjected, and we believe

that there are few mammas who would desire to see their daughters

in the position of Miss Lydia Blood.

 

“An old maid,” as our correspondent playfully calls herself, may

do almost anything without violating etiquette, if she consents to

become a chaperon, and takes with her a younger person. Thus an

aunt and niece can travel far and wide; the position